The evolution of remote collaboration has traversed an interesting landscape. From smoke signals and homing pigeons to email and videoconferencing, the next iteration of remote collaboration demands that it be dynamic, convenient, efficient and simple. Currently, about 70 percent of the global workforce works from home at least once a week and those numbers are expected to continue to increase.
While these efforts can help an organization eliminate the logistical challenges of coordinating a physical meeting and the need for expensive office space, and at the same time help employees erase long commutes in traffic and expensive monthly parking fees—disorganization and inefficiencies in collaboration efforts can lead to lost time and ultimately impact the bottom line. The solution was a platform that takes the best aspects of traditional office collaboration and transforms it into a digital environment to optimize the remote work experience.
Enter RendezView, whose origins can be traced to the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UH Mānoa), a vibrant research and development hub centered around the exploration of emerging technologies in big data, visualization, human computer interaction, analytics, and virtual and augmented reality. The state-of-the-art lab was created by Jason Leigh, a professor of information and computer sciences at UH Mānoa, who also serves as co-director of the university’s new Data Science Institute and is director emeritus of the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Inspired by Dr. Leigh’s research and teachings, three UH information and computer science (ICS) graduate students working in LAVA joined forces to create RendezView in 2017. Despite the plethora of collaborative applications that existed at the time, it was still a challenge to work on complex problems remotely as many of the applications solved single pieces of the puzzle, requiring teams to repeatedly toggle between applications. This repeated back-and-forth between applications increases workers cognitive fatigue, resulting in higher rates of error and considerable time loss.
RendezView came up with a global unified solution—creating a real-time collaborative workspace, connecting people in way that mimics a meeting room. The platform’s “Workspaces” provide a digital tabletop environment for teams to work simultaneously with one another whether editing documents, sharing files, videoconferencing, or all of the above.
While sharing similar technical backgrounds, RendezView’s three co-founders each brought different areas of specialization that was essential to the creation and development of their technology. Alberto González Martínez brought his skills and knowledge in visualization systems, data analysis, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Dylan Kobayashi contributed with his research involving collaboration, remote interaction, and virtual, augmented and hybrid reality. Ryan Theriot and his expertise in virtual reality, data visualization, human computer interaction and 3D graphics, rounded out this rather impress collection of skillsets.
These skillsets combined with old fashioned hard work propelled RendezView to first place in the Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (PACE) Business Plan Competition hosted by the Schidler College of Business at UH Mānoa and was recently selected as a cohort in UH’s accelerator program. This year, RendezView rolled out its first round of beta testing to a number of Hawai’i companies.
“RendezView is a result of our longstanding passion for improving the way groups solve problems together,” said co-founder González Martinez. “We think that other collaborative systems either lack the flexibility or the capabilities needed for real collaboration to truly happen. Our goal is to provide teams with the best medium and the best tools to truly learn and create amazing things together wherever they might be.”
With RendezView’s Workspaces, employers can now offer employees flexible workplace options—helping to recruit top talent, provide a seamless online co-working space 24/7— helping to boost productivity and retention, and save time, money and the environment—by cutting down the commute and the expense of office space. The future of remote working is here today at UH Mānoa. For more information on RendezView, go to: www.rendezview.io.